Butchers – the farm ambassadors – add value to meat business

What's for dinner? Apprentice butcher, Matt Wilson, Kin Kora Meats, Gladstone, Australian Meat Industry Council chief executive officer, Patrick Hutchinson, and principal of Parkhurst Quality Meats, Rockhampton, with some of the meal options served up by butchers at Beef Australia last month.

Somehow Australia’s fascination with celebrity chefs and television cooking programs has overlooked a key ingredient in the nation’s meal time experience – the butcher.

About two thirds of the sales turnover in butcher shops today is now attributed to freshly prepared meals for busy shoppers, or a range of other meat product lines which go well beyond rump steak, chicken thighs or lamb cutlets.

From pre-cooked curries, stroganoff and lasagne through to ready-to-cook satay skewers, beef Wellington or cordon bleu chicken, the menu offering in many of Australia’s 2000-plus butcher shops makes easy work of preparing dinner for thousands of families every day.

“And there’s rarely a butcher to be seen in a supermarket these days,” Mr Hutchinson said.

For those butcher shops with the right mix of service, skills, new products and a good shopping centre location, he said business was brisk.

“I know of shops trading right beside Woolworths whose turnover grew up to 200 per cent in the past 18 months.”

He said butchers were also “invaluable ambassadors for farmers”, particularly in metropolitan areas where few city dwellers have contact with agriculture, or much empathy with what’s involved in producing a choice steak or fillet of pork.

“Butchers provide a city window to farming,” he said.

“Every day they’re talking about what farmers produce and how the farming industry is respected internationally.”

Ready-to-cook meat meal solutions prepared at a local butcher shop.

“They relish their connections with producers and processors and they promote locally-grown product and regional brands, not imports.

“They’re also likely to pay the best prices for quality meat, setting the bar for producers to get a good return for their efforts.”

Butchers handle just under a quarter of all fresh meat sales in Australia.

However, despite all the personality, artisan preparation skills and extra value they add to food retailing, butchers are fighting a serious rear-guard action to keep supermarkets from eating up their market.

The combined Coles and Woolworths retail juggernaut now claims about 51pc of all fresh meat sales in Australia, while Aldi increased its market share almost 1pc in the past year to reach 9.6pc, according to latest Roy Morgan research.

As small family-run businesses, butchers have felt the full force of soaring energy costs, stiff rental prices for prime retail space and surging values for livestock in regional saleyards.

Well-funded vegan activist campaigns had also increased their aggressive publicity seeking tactics against some butcher shops and restaurants, which threatened to undermine public confidence in meat retailing.

“They’re resilient, but butchers are feeling the pressure,” said Mr Hutchinson, who believed more must be done to bolster the independent meat retailer’s self confidence and recognition in the community.

AMIC already has plans afoot to start developing a “love your local butcher” style marketing campaign, which could dovetail into the success of Meat and Livestock Australia’s popular lamb and beef marketing efforts.

Mr Hutchinson has taken some cues from the British meat retail sector which he said did a great job of cultivating the image of butchers and their popularity as food marketers.

“British butchers are well loved and they’re well supported.

“We’ve certainly looked at how the industry is promoted in the UK.”

He also wants to highlight how significant butchers are as employers and trainers of young staff.

“There are the equivalent of 5000 full time jobs directly attributed to our butcher shops – they’re a significant contributor to the workforce.”

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